Sorcery and the Single Girl (20 page)

I could have persisted—I think I might have been able to do anything to his weakened body, even without bringing my powers into play. His lips, though, had begun to return to a remotely normal shade, and the green-blue shadow of veins had faded from his forehead. I decided that he was recovering, and I crouched back onto the edge of the coffee table.

“Thank you,” I said, and my voice trembled as I thought of what might have happened downstairs. “Thank you for trying to fight that thing.”

“What in the name of Hecate’s own private hell did you do down there?”

Neko arrived at the top of the stairs just in time to hear the end of David’s furious question. I wasn’t surprised to see my familiar turn tail, pulling the basement door closed behind him.

Coward.

I tried to understand the venom in David’s voice. I assumed he’d been frightened—if not as badly as I had been. I knew he was exhausted. I could only guess how much his body ached.

But anger? Outright, untamed rage?

“I was trying to save us?” I cursed inwardly when my answer came out sounding like a question.

“By using Dark Magic?”

“Dark—”

“What gives you the right to work a Will Breaking spell?”

“Will—”

“And how did you think I wouldn’t notice, when it was directed against me?”

“Stop!” I said, as he pulled himself up straighter against the armrest. I could see he was only moving to expand his lungs, to get more volume so that he could continue his excoriation. “Just stop for one damned minute!” I said. Whether he heeded my demand, or was merely too weak to go on, I took full advantage of his silence. “Directed against
you?
I was fighting against that…that thing! That pressure! The jasper wall that was threatening all of us!”

And then I realized what was going on. I remembered David’s stance as the thrumming power had approached. I remembered his legs spread wide, his back strong and straight. His hands hanging loosely at his sides, fingers extended. And I recalled the odd familiarity of the magic I’d opposed, the way I had seemed to know it, somehow, some way.

David had been working a spell.

He was a warder. He wasn’t able to do much magic. But he had some at his disposal—he’d told me as much the first time we’d sat down to dinner to discuss the wonderful world of witchcraft. He could use magic to protect his ward, to protect
me.

Usually, it was minor stuff—reading the auras of people around us, making sure they weren’t plotting any unseemly attacks. He could light candles and extinguish them. I’d been the recipient of his headache-banishing spell several times, when I’d pushed my own powers beyond their natural scope.

But the thing that had threatened in the basement? That was an entirely new range of activities. That was completely beyond anything I’d seen from David before.

Without thinking, I threw the damp towel at him, hitting him square in the middle of his chest. He reacted slowly, and was left grasping for the cotton cloth as it slid onto the cushion of the couch. “You bastard!” I said. “
You
were the power! You were pretending to threaten me!”

“I had to do something.” His words were nearly as heated as my own. “You weren’t bothering to practice.”

“I’ve had enough practice!”

“I decide when you’ve had enough practice. I’m the warder.”

“And I’m the witch!” I sprang to my feet, began pacing between the coffee table and the front door. Dammit! He had really frightened me. He had really made me believe that something malevolent was after us, that something truly evil was converging on my cottage.

“Now that we’ve established our roles,” he said, ignoring the furious glare I shot his way, “maybe you’ll deign to tell me where you learned a spell that has been banned for public use?”

Haylee.

Haylee had taught me the illegal spell by working it on the unsuspecting staff at Café La Ruche. She hadn’t
intended
to teach me: I had just observed. Apparently, I’d paid close enough attention to master the magic on my own.

Or
had
I mastered it?

Haylee’s spell had certainly not had the same effect as mine. Everyone at the bistro had gone about their business physically unharmed, waiting on other tables, collecting other patrons’ money. No one had been hurtled to the floor; no one had been left bruised and breathless.

“Who?” David said again, and I could measure his recovery by the amount of raw rage behind the word.

It wasn’t Haylee’s fault that my working was too powerful. It wasn’t her responsibility that I threw my powers around. I couldn’t give her up, when I was the one who had done something wrong. “It doesn’t matter who,” I said. And then, even though I knew it was dangerous to do so, I had to go on. “You shouldn’t be angry. You should be proud of me.”

“
Proud
of you?” I flinched at the volume of his roar, even as a tiny corner of my mind was relieved by his rapid recovery. Surely Neko could hear downstairs. My familiar would
have
to interrupt, if a life-and-death battle erupted up here. He would
need
to come to my rescue. Wouldn’t he?

“Proud of me,” I repeated, with a bit less confidence. In for a penny, in for a pound, I told myself. “We were working on self-defense, right? Well, I protected myself. I used my magic to keep myself safe. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

“I
want
you to be able to go about in the world of witchcraft. I want you to be able to practice freely. Do you have any idea what would have happened, if I had not contained your brilliant little working? Do you have the faintest notion how quickly Hecate’s Council would have swarmed here?”

The last smidgen of certainty drained from my mind. “H-Hecate’s Council?”

David sighed. “Jane, there was enough power behind your spell to feel it from New York to Georgia.”

“Georgia?” I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Me? I had summoned that much force? With one little spell that I’d never even tried to cast before?

David struggled up to a full sitting position, and I winced with him as he rubbed the back of his neck. “You should know this by now,” he said. “The Council monitors Dark Magic. There’s a whole group of witches who watch specifically for breaks in expected power. Your little show would have been off the scale.”

“And so you stopped it?”

“I absorbed it. As best I could. I broke it up, anyway. If anyone was already looking here, already focused on your house, they’d be able to see that something happened. But I was able to keep the energy from flowing out as one massive block. There will be ripples left around for days, though. I can’t do anything about that.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, even though my words were inadequate. And I was. I truly was. If my spell had been as strong as David said—and I had no reason not to believe him—then he had been my lifesaver, keeping me safe from Council justice. I collapsed onto the other couch. “I thought that I was protecting us. Stopping that thing, whatever it was.”

“You certainly did stop it.” He managed a ghost of a smile. For the first time since coming upstairs, I took a deep breath. Everything was going to be all right. We
were
safe.

But that just made me return to my original question. “What was it? What did you summon?”

His skin returned to its normal tone, and I realized that he must be blushing. David Montrose. My warder. Blushing.

“What?” I pushed.

“It was nothing.”

“I felt it. Don’t tell
me
it was nothing.”

“It was just…you.”

“Me?”

“You.” He started to shake his head, but winced before he truly got the motion going. “It was your stubbornness. Your refusal to work. Your rebellion. I gathered the energy and pushed it back at you.”

My stomach dropped. “All of that was coming from me?”

Instead of answering, he closed his eyes and eased his head to the back of the couch. “I shouldn’t have done it. I just wanted you to feel a touch of danger. A hint of what could be arrayed against you. Placing the centerstone isn’t a game, Jane. It’s the most serious working of magic. You’re going to build a safe haven for witches, a protected place for generations of practitioners to come. You’ll be vulnerable at that working. You can’t take it lightly. And you’ll have to be prepared for the worst.”

I fought against the chilly finger of fear that traced my spine. I spluttered for something to say. “So, you think that
I
am the worst.”

He smiled, even though he didn’t lift his head. “I think that you are your own worst enemy. For now.” Before I could muster a response, he did sit up, and he looked straight at me. “Jane. This is important. Who taught you the Will Breaking Spell?”

“No.”

My fingers jangled, like limbs awakening from a sound sleep. I couldn’t tell him. There must be some mistake. Something that
I
had done wrong. Haylee had never intended to teach me the spell. I must have twisted her working when I attempted to reproduce it on my own. After all, Teresa Alison Sidney certainly wouldn’t let Haylee run around working Dark Magic. The strongest Coven Mother in recent history wasn’t going to let her best friend violate the laws of Hecate’s Council.

David’s voice was persuasive. “Jane, if I’m going to keep you safe, I need to know.”

For just a moment, I was thrown back in time. I was sixteen years old and sitting on Gran’s couch. I was explaining that she needed to give me the car keys, needed to trust me with her Lincoln so that Melissa and I could drive to a friend’s party. I’d pulled out the big guns. “Gran,” I had said. “You taught me everything I know. Now you have to trust me.”

It had worked well enough then—Melissa and I went to the party, and I had drunk nothing stronger than water, afraid that even caffeine would rattle my nerves for the drive home.

Now, I looked David straight in the eye. “David,” I said. “You taught me everything I know. Now you have to trust me.”

It was a great line.

“Fine,” he said at last. “I trust you. But don’t do anything stupid, Jane.”

“Stupid!” I managed to sound scandalized at the notion.

“Stupid,” he repeated, and then he waved toward the table. “Could you get me another glass of water? And open up the basement door. Tell Neko it’s safe to come out.”

I did just that. And as I filled David’s glass at the kitchen sink, I wondered what I was going to say to Haylee when I saw her again. And how long it would be before David left, so that I could call Graeme. Just to talk. Just to share the craziness of my witchy day. Like any friends did. Any good friends. I pasted a smile on my face and counted the days till Wednesday.

“W
ell, well, well,” Gran said. “It’s hard to believe that another month has gone by.”

Clara joined in with, “And it’s so nice that the city has finally cooled off.”

Great. We were reduced to chatting about the weather. The weather and the calendar. Were those any conversational topics for grandmother, mother and daughter? For three generations of witches?

But that was the problem. We couldn’t talk about witchcraft. Couldn’t talk about the single most important thing in
my
life. Ever since Gran had asked me to abandon the Coven and I had refused, I had felt unable to mention anything to do with magic. Yet, as autumn gained its true grip on our shortening days, I felt I had fewer and fewer topics to share. Setting the centerstone always lurked at the back of my mind.

I certainly wasn’t about to mention the telephone conversation I’d had with Graeme the night before, after David had finally left. After Neko had gone off with Jacques, intent on making the Gallant Gaul stop sulking about an entire day lost to witchy business.

I took a quick sip of my water, trying to keep a blush from stealing across my face. After all, it wasn’t every evening that I threw myself across my couch, whispering into a portable telephone. It wasn’t every evening that I could have written a letter to a porno Web site. “Dear Hotmamas.com: I never thought that I’d be the sort of girl to seduce a man over the telephone…” It wasn’t every evening that I pleaded—begged—a man to catch a transoceanic flight and come up and see me some time.

Graeme had laughed—no,
chortled
—and told me that he couldn’t break away. He was in the middle of a business deal. I could hear him typing away on a computer keyboard, hear the chime of incoming e-mail. When I’d complained that it was the middle of the night in London, that no sane man would be working, he had told me that just proved he was insane.

So, he wouldn’t hop an earlier flight. But that hadn’t stopped us from talking. And after a while, I didn’t
want
him to appear on my doorstep. I would have been too embarrassed about some of the things I’d said.

No, I wasn’t going to be repeating any of
that
conversation to the Smythe-Madison women. That really wasn’t what our monthly bonding brunch was all about.

Before I could think of suitably neutral tinder to toss on our dying conversational embers, the waitress brought our meals. Luna Grill was known for its build-your-own omelet brunch—I’d been reminded of the restaurant when Melissa recounted her disastrous date with the Dedicated. Looking at our current plates, I couldn’t imagine a clearer depiction of our personalities.

Gran had ordered the heart attack special: a three-egg omelet with ham, bacon, and sausage folded in, along with cheddar cheese. She had shrugged when she ordered, accepting my gaping disbelief with a gentle smile. “If cholesterol hasn’t done me in yet, it’s not going to get me now.” I accepted her reasoning, especially since I knew she wouldn’t eat more than a quarter of the thing before declaring herself full.

Clara was going through a vegetarian phase. It had to do with discovering the true balance of her Pisces nature, with recognizing complete respect for all living things. In fact, she had initially declared herself a vegan, but since she had no idea how to cook tofu, tempeh or beans (without the addition of a good piece of salty ham), she had retreated to a broader definition of spiritually healthful eating. Egg-white omelet for her, then, with spinach, mushrooms and sautéed bell peppers. I wanted to ask her if she could hear the vegetables weeping for their lost siblings, but I thought that might only increase the friction between us.

I had been looking forward to a good egg dish when I got to the restaurant, but my relatives had put me off my game. I’d decided to abandon omelets altogether and stick with my ongoing theme of comfort food. Therefore, I was feasting on French toast, with a gallon of maple syrup dumped on top and enough whipped cream to make butter superfluous. I had added a side of fresh fruit. After all, breakfast was the most important meal of the day.

Okay. So we’d finished with the calendar. With the weather. I couldn’t talk about the Coven, and I wouldn’t mention Graeme. What did that leave?

“Things have been busy at work,” I said, promptly filling my mouth with a giant bite of maple-soaked bread to avoid any immediate need to reply to their inevitable questions.

“I wanted to stop by for your Monday lecture, but I got busy with opera things,” Gran said. “Did I see that you were discussing mothers and daughters in colonial times?”

“Where did you see that?” I asked, surprised, and a little impressed that Gran stayed in the Peabridge intellectual loop.

“On the library’s Web site, of course,” Gran said, taking another dainty bite of her Lumberjack Special.

I almost choked on a strawberry. Gran? On the Internet?

“Don’t look so surprised,” she said. “You did set up my computer for me.”

“I thought you just used it for e-mail.”

“For e-mail. But when I get bored, I skate the Internet.”

“Surf,” I said.

“Surf. That’s right.” Gran nodded happily. “Have you ever heard of Wikipedia?”

“Um, yes,” I said. Of course I’d heard of the online encyclopedia. I used it for quick reference checks all the time, even if I was wary about the legitimacy of some of the entries. Anyone could register to participate in the service, creating and editing information that everyone could search online for free.

“Your Uncle George showed me Wikipedia. I’m working on correcting some of the opera entries. Do you know that someone actually wrote that
Tosca
has
four
acts?”

Clara answered before I could. “Scandalous,” she said. Her eyes met mine over her coffee cup, and I think we were both trying to keep from laughing. Sarah Smythe, Wikipedia editor. My grandmother never ceased to amaze me.

Gran didn’t take the bait. Instead, she said to me, “I’ve been trying to get your mother involved. There are hundreds of entries about astrology. Someone should be paying attention to them, making sure they’re accurate.”

“And I’m just the person for the job,” Clara said, clearly quoting Gran’s recruitment speech as she pushed food around on her plate.

I asked, “Is there something wrong with your omelet?” If the kitchen had messed up, I wanted them to correct things—I felt responsible for the meal because it was my turn to pay.

“Oh, no.” Clara sighed and speared a wilted leaf of spinach. “It’s just that I don’t really like vegetables in my eggs. Eggs cry out for cheese. And maybe a bit of ham.”

She looked forlornly at Gran’s omelet, and Gran obliged by pushing her plate across the table. “Help yourself, dear. I can’t eat another bite.”

I smiled. I’d known that Gran wouldn’t get close to finishing her entire meal. Clara speared meat from Gran’s plate and augmented her own breakfast, while Gran and I refrained from commenting on the shocking collapse of Piscean vegetarianism in our midst. In fact, I helped myself to a bite of the meaty omelet, mentally justifying that I had to balance my sweet breakfast plate with Gran’s savory one.

Gran, undeterred from her earlier topic of conversation, said, “Clara, you
are
the person for the job. I can’t imagine anyone with more knowledge than you about the signs of the Zodiac.”

I sank back onto my wooden bench and glanced up at the mural of a sun painted on the opposite wall of the restaurant. He was smiling, and I couldn’t help but think he approved of our conversation. All was right in this little world. Gran was meddling quietly in our lives, expressing her absolute certainty that Clara and I could both conquer whatever we had in front of us. And, if history was any guide, it was just about time for the spotlight to turnonme.

“And you, Jane,” Gran said with perfect timing. “You should take a look at their article about coffee. I’m certain that you could add something, given your experience at the library.”

Great. I wasn’t seen as an expert on colonial history. Or even on clothing in eighteenth-century America. Nope. I was about to be crowned the best latte maker in Georgetown.

And I wasn’t even that. Melissa could pour rings around me any day.

I wasn’t going to go there. I wasn’t going to mention Melissa, to let Gran and Clara sort through our little friendship wrinkle.

As if she were reading my mind, Clara chimed in. “You could ask Melissa, if you had any questions.”

So much for that plan. I made my voice firm. “I have no intention of editing the coffee article. I drink tea.” I took the opportunity to catch our waitress’s eye, to solicit a new pot of hot water.

Clara dug in. “I’m just saying that between the two of you, you have a lot of information. You and Melissa could work very well together.”

“If we were speaking to each other.”

Oh. I guess I really
did
want to talk about Melissa. Why did my conversations with Gran and Clara always steer toward whatever one thing I was absolutely, positively certain I didn’t want to talk about?

Gran pounced. “You had a fight with Melissa?”

“Not so much a fight. Just a…gap.”

“A gap?” Clara looked at me as if I was speaking a foreign language.

“We’ve both been busy,” I said, after stabbing another bite of Gran’s omelet, buying time for a reply. “She thinks that I’m too tied into…other things.” No reason to drag Graeme into the fray. Clara would want to work up his star chart, and Gran would have us married off in a matter of hours.

“And you think?” Gran prompted.

“I think that if she has a problem, she should talk to me directly.” I excavated another sliver of ham. “She avoids me, and then she tries to make me feel guilty. I think we just need some time apart from each other.”

“It sounds to me,” Clara said, fishing for the last piece of sausage on Gran’s plate, “as if you need to spend more time
together.
”

“Ha,” I said, without a trace of humor. “I don’t think that’s going to happen any time soon.” I was determined to get the conversation away from my so-called best friend. “Anyway, no matter how you slice it, I’m not an expert on coffee. If I have one more fight with the stupid coffee grinder at work, I might walk out of the library altogether.”

Gran clicked her tongue. “That doesn’t sound like you, Jane. You love the Peabridge.”

“But I hate what it’s become. Or what I’ve become, working there. We’re a victim of our own success. Evelyn’s little coffee bar is so popular that I spend more time making fancy coffee drinks than I do researching colonial history.”

“Maybe you need to get rid of the coffee drinks.”

“Like Evelyn would ever go for that.” Everything was so simple in Gran’s world. She could just dust her hands and be free of any little problem, like coffee grounds, or steamed milk, or chocolate syrup, or whipped cream.

Clara chimed in, and I could tell she was trying to be reasonable, trying to act as peacemaker—a novel role for her. “Why did Evelyn put in the coffee bar in the first place?”

I decided to play along. “So that we could add money to the operations budget. It’s amazing how much we make by offering overpriced caffeine. Starbucks has already done our job for us—they have everyone conditioned to spend four dollars on a cup of coffee. If we charge five, and offer the convenience of drinking it in the library, they’re only too eager to pony up.”

Gran nodded. “But what if you simplified things? Cut back to regular drip coffee? That would make things easier for you, wouldn’t it?”

“Our profits would plummet. Even if we charged three dollars a cup, there just aren’t enough takers to meet Evelyn’s bottom line.”

“But drip coffee and a sweet? A cookie or a brownie or something like that?”

It actually wasn’t a bad idea. We’d even had a couple of patrons ask about scones or muffins to go with their ill-gotten coffee gains. And if I only needed to slam a brownie on a plate after I poured regular old coffee…“Where am I going to find the time to bake?” I argued.

Gran smiled. “It takes less than half an hour to make an entire tray of brownies. You know that. We made enough for school activities while you were growing up.”

I glanced at Clara to see if the reference to my mother-deprived childhood rattled her. She was intent, though, on sneaking a strip of bacon from the ruins of Gran’s omelet. Oblivious, Gran went on, “If you don’t have time, I’m sure that Melissa can help you out.”

“Melissa is the one who doesn’t have the time,” I said flatly.

“Well, I’m sure that you could manage without too much difficulty,” Gran said.

A line of Shakespeare came to me, from the scrambled depth of my literary mind:
Thou art a mocker of my labour.
It was from
As You Like It,
said by Orlando. I didn’t bother saying the words out loud—neither Gran nor Clara would have recognized it.

But maybe they weren’t mocking. Maybe I
should
consider a little baking at home. The more I toyed with the idea, the more it made sense. If we could get five dollars for a cup of coffee, what would people pay for an ordinary brownie? A couple of chocolate chip cookies? I didn’t have to produce anything as complicated as Cake Walk did.

Sure, we might lose a buck or two by dropping the expensive lattes and cappuccinos, but we’d still make a relative fortune on drip coffee. And we’d make up the difference—and more—on baked goods, even after we paid for the ingredients.

If I were freed from the tyranny of foaming milk, I could return to my true love—working as a reference librarian. It was worth half an hour spent baking each night, if that meant I could work as a librarian during the day. I sat back on the bench, enamored with the notion of trading in my coffee bar apron.

Sure, there would be complications. Mr. Potter would have to give up his mocha—although I bet I could convince him to accept a shot of chocolate in a regular cup of coffee. And he really
should
be cutting back a bit on whipped cream.